|| PG 00 Raiser – received!!

My first contact with PG 00 Raiser? July 17th, when a friend on LiveJournal brought it to my attention. Since then, it has been a long wait of 4 months, 1 week and 2 days to its release on 26th November, and then another week till today, when I finally picked it up. I’ve been waiting 4 months, 2 weeks and 2 days for you, PG00R! Of course, as soon as I received La Tendo’s notification email saying that the PG had arrived, I sought to go there asap to obtain it.

On my way to La Tendo, a downpour started in Dhoby Ghaut, confirming my worst fears. OTL Luckily, by the time we reached Kallang, the downpour had mostly thinned so it was only drizzling. XD One worry down!

Cross the road, take the escalator, pass Donut Empire and the food court…and we reached La Tendo!

After the guy had confirmed that I was one of the pre-order customers and handed me my first Perfect Grade kit + stand in a giant red plastic bag, the time was 2:15 pm, 04 December 2009.

I joked to a few friends about getting a poncho for the PG kit so that it wouldn’t be drenched in the rain, since it has been raining a lot lately. XD Well, the plastic bag was big enough to contain it, but because the box was so wide, I had trouble holding the bag by the handles. The guy suggested using the handle on the box they already gave, and I turned the plastic bag into an improvised poncho by cutting a slit in its side for the handle to go through. :D :D Note to self to carry stationery around because you never know when they’ll come in useful.

May I say that the PG is very heavy. La Tendo estimated it at 1 kg [and interestingly, HLJ placed it at 4.37 kg], so effectively, I was lugging around 1 kg and then some for an hour and a half. My arms now feel a lot stronger, and tomorrow, they’ll start cramping up. Hooray. xD

Anyway, enough rambling and on to the pics! :P

GN-0000 00 Gundam + GNR-010 0 Raiser – Perfect Grade 1/60

There it be. ♥ It’s beautiful. ;_____; Well, we know it’s ‘huge’, but just how ‘huge’ is ‘huge’?

Pictures paint a thousand words. From the left, we have a PPP [4 cm], a Calendar Figurine [6 cm], a HGIF figurine [10 cm], a Portrait figurine [12 cm], a non-scale SD, and a HG 1/144 on a display base. Yeah, it’s huge, all right.

A more meaningful comparison for gunpla modelers. From the left, a NG 1/100, the same HG 1/144 and the same SD from earlier. Hooooly.

BROS.

Past and present! Successor meets predecessor. I hope to bolster my collection with a certain MG one day. :B Also, I didn’t have a chance to take a comparison pic of my PG box and Regnant’s box, but if I remember correctly, Regnant’s box should be slightly taller than the PG. XD

Look at the difference of the widths lmao. Also a hopefully better view of the height difference between the two kits, since the above image doesn’t show that difference clearly, or at all.

And the black box is the display base! It’s as other people have said – the box is about the size of a small HG kit like, say, a GN Archer. While the cashier was handling the payment and checking of lists, the guy taking my PG 00R didn’t take this out and for a moment I wondered if by some weird error, I had missed out on the base. o_O;;; So I asked for the base and it turned out the base were already arranged in a stack behind him. XD XD The stack was blocked from view by the counter, so I didn’t see them. |D

More comparison. I chose chibiKero because some of you have this kit so it’ll give you a better idea. More emphasis on HUGE etc.

…yeah, this is really the width of the PG box. The PG box is thicker than the height of a small Keropla kit. ): FFFFFF

Unboxing
The contents of the display base box! Nothing fancy. The parts are surprisingly heavy for their small number. And the shiny silver seal that you get to paste on the SIDE [and not the front] of your base…! :D;

The base. IT’S HUGE. And there’s that mini-runner thing on its top which you need to remove. :|a Why not just produce the base on its own without that mini-runner? Setsu PPP makes an appearance!

And yep, it is bigger than a 1/100. XD

The GN Drives! Admittedly, one of the reasons why I wanted to get the PG when it was announced was because I wanted the chance to assemble the GN Drives. A Perfect Grade GN Drive…how would it and its components look like? And then came the news that the insides are capable of rotating, which effectively threw the notion of DIY assembly out of the window, lol! Not gonna lie, when I first found out that the GN Drives are going to come pre-assembled, I was kind of upset, but then a Taiwanese modeler took apart the GN Drive and showed how the contents look like, and, well, I understand why Bandai chose to pre-assemble them. People had enough trouble with PG Wing Zero’s wiring, I imagine trying to wire this would drive people crazy with frustration. XDD;

I don’t have a video at hand, so I can’t give you the obligatory UNLIMITED SPINNING GN DRIVE WORKS video. xD;; I like that they’ve specifically labelled [on the box cover, at least] which GN Drive is O Gundam’s, which one is Exia’s.

Don’t know if anyone took photos of the back of the box. I was pretty surprised to see that the other side of the box was not a blank side but was also printed with something. xD Nothing too fancy. Just a “GN DRIVE SYSTEM etc”.

I did plan to take out the GN Drive, but they’re packed so snugly that I was sure I would have problems replacing them back. :/ So all you get is a comparison with a PPP ahaha…maybe when I’m finally building it months down the road, I’ll do a better comparison. And there’re already a lot of comparison pics out there, so it’s not a big loss. About the GN Drive, it’s just as BIG as everything else in this box. It’s only slightly shorter than the PPP, which stands at 4 cm. XD Setsuna, with Exia’s GN Drive! For the record, a GN Drive from 1/100 00R measures slightly less than 2 cm, and one from the HG version stands at less than 1.5 cm. So, yeah. The GN Drives are huge.

Box A, which contains 00 Gundam’s parts. The height is a no-brainer – similar to the box it came in.

This is a bad photo because I had to rotate it, but as for its width, it doesn’t seem to be any bigger than MG Exia Ignition Mode. I really like the box cover. Linearts and designs adorn the box, and it’s as if they’ve taken Ian’s papers and then reprint them all over the box. XD Simple, and pretty. <3

Contents of Box A. The green parts are VERY BIG. I forgot to take comparison pics, but I had quite the shock seeing them. O_O; And yes, the giant white parts are all there too. So are the ridiculously long beam saber effects. OTL

OTL OTL OTL Yeah, foil stickers. I didn’t think people would be able to see those stickers after they’ve been covered up by the green parts, but apparently, they’re still slightly visible. Interesting. The stickers are big, like everything else. And big stickers are hard to get right…

Box B, which contains 0 Raiser’s parts. I’m not too sure why the lighting changed. xD;; Box A is right behind it, to show you the difference in length. They’re both equally wide and tall. rrobert184 from gundam.tk remarked that the box made it look like a blueprint, as if O Raiser is being rolled out, and I agree with his opinion. The box is a very gorgeous shade of blue.

Contents of Box B. More giant white parts, and DO YOU SEE DAT TRANS-AM SWORD EFFECT.

Yeah. Yeah. ): It’s insane.

Just for kicks, I decided to stack up the parts to see how tall 58 runners stacked on top of each other would be. XD My answer is 50 cm-ish, give or take. And you see that the runners aren’t really sizeable. They’re no more larger than MG Exia IM’s runners, I think, and most of them come with giant parts.

One last look before it’s wrapped up and stored away! I hope to see you guys again in a year or so. XDDD And yeah, unfortunately, I won’t get to build them any time soon, because I have ZERO SPACE to display it. My parents said no to installing shelves, and I’d rather get something like a cabinet so that the kit won’t get too dusty. As of right now, it’s been all wrapped up in a giant plastic bag and placed on top of the wardrobe in my room. XD;;; Talk about being so near and yet so far…but it’s a test of patience. XD If I can live with not touching my MG Exia for 4 months, then surely this won’t be too much problem. It’s regrettable, yes, but I’ll live. :D

Things I like about the PG:
-That everything is BIG, BIG, BIG. From the box, to its base, to its parts [sadly enough xD] and its price. XD

-THE BASE!! I remember how disappointed people were when the base was announced as a special initial production prize, but when you think about it, there aren’t many bases for 1/60 gunpla. Plus, 00 Raiser shines in dynamic poses, so I feel that the base is an underappreciated add-on.

-00 Gundam’s gimmicks…everything! It’s packed with gimmicks from head to toe, from the basic light-up eyes to the GN Drives to the joint-clutches and one person even said it was gimmick overload, so much so that PG 00 seems less than a model kit and more like a toy. xD;;;

-O Raiser’s gimmicks amazed me more than 00’s did, to be honest. XD I watched thesevideos by the Apron Person, and I remember being far more surprised by O Raiser, its size and its landing gear!!! The landing gear made me squeal, lol!! It felt like watching Regnant’s videos all over again. Like husband, like wife, huh?

-Setsuna and Saji [!!] pilot figurines!

-Everything, lol!! Being a 00 Raiser fan, this was a dream come true. A very unexpected dream, might I add, since I was expecting Exia to receive the PG treatment first. o_o;

And now for the things that I didn’t like so much about the PG:
-I’ve resisted for the longest time, but even I have to give in to the general consensus that PG 00R feels like a magnified MG in terms of parts. There’re too many big pieces for my taste. I believe firmly that 00 Gundam’s design’s too sleek to incorporate large number of parts, the way Strike and past PG’s armour pieces were fragmented into pieces which added to the challenge of building a PG. But when subsequent WIPs by various modelers also showed that even O Raiser didn’t have an awful lot of parts, I wasn’t too happy about it. I can’t help but wonder if they’re keeping the PG’s design big so that they don’t have to redesign new armour parts for the MG. :|a

-I guess this is going to seem nitpicky, but I really wanted those clear blue parts for the GN Sword II… XD They gave the PG dark green parts for the GN Condensors, they gave clear blue parts to PG Strike, but they couldn’t colour the parts for the GN Sword II? Hrrrmmm. Then again, Bandai didn’t even spare red ink for their own logo for PG 00R’s water decals. *headdesk*

-the design of the base. I’m happy with the base we’re getting, but one in the form of a CB logo would be something to see. Also, do you know that the silver seal meant for the base is supposed to be positioned on the side of the base, and not its front? :|a It would have looked loads better if the silver seal was positioned at the front so that the viewer can look down at the base and see the seal at first glance, you know? Rob has confirmed that you can paste the seal anywhere you like, so it’s not confined to only its side. Thank you!

-the clear parts. Luckily for me, I’m not getting it. Not so fortunately for the people who’re paying for it, one set of clear parts + delivery [+ COD fees] = roughly the cost of a MG. >_< What makes it worse is that you can't interexchange the parts because you run the risk of breaking them if you do. So you're stuck with either displaying it forever on its own, or stuck displaying it with clear parts on. Do they want you to buy another kit just to display those clear parts? Whaaaat. Yeah, this is where they fail big time. As much as I love this PG kit and its special prizes, this is really ridiculous. ;;;; [[Well, Dalong managed to remove the parts, but that’s because his hands are magic XD On the plus side, it means that while the risk is there, it’s probably not as drastic as Bandai made it out to be.]]

-[Saji doesn't come with a Haro… :(] I take back what I said!!! Go to Dalong for pics, and you’ll see that Haro is already there, in O Raiser’s cockpit! That’s adorable!

Things in limbo [aka It’s Really All Subjective In The End]
-[[I like the donut-ring system they came up with for supporting O Raiser’s binders. But I’ve also come across contradicting opinions about their strength and holding power. One Japanese modeler said they hold pretty well, but this guy feels otherwise. I guess we won’t know until someone has tried it. XD]] MrRithinya21 from Youtube has affirmed that the donut-ring joints are strong, hold well and don’t sag beneath the side binders’ weight. AKA yes, those joints are tiny, but they’re also magically strong.

-[[Errr, inner frame details. I’m kind of split on this. On one hand, I agree that the inner frame isn’t as detailed as one would expect, but on the other, what other details could they have added, really? Hydraulic pipes would have looked out of place on 00 Raiser. The kit doesn’t have enough armour parts to justify more nooks and crannies for male bits. All that gave rise to a very ‘clean’ look, which resembles the appearance of a MG rather than a PG. So, in the end, it’s 00 Raiser’s own design that led to its shortfall in this area.]]
MrRithinya21 from Youtube suggests that the lack of details on the inner frame is really because of the GN Condensors. The condensors need flat, round surfaces to work, so stuff like fake wiring, hydraulic pipes…they’d get in the way and inhibit movement and articulation of the limbs. The GN Condensor on their own apparently make this kit a huge challenge. Now I can’t wait for the day I get to open it, LOL. You can read his thoughts on the Channel Comments on http://gundam.tk

This list isn’t exhaustive, merely a collection of thoughts that came to me as I was anticipating its arrival. XD

This has been a hell of a roller coaster ride, with me being buffered from side to side by mostly disdain for the kit. To be frank though, I’d happily go through it all over again to obtain the PG kit anyway even if I were given a chance to return to the past. After all, if you love something, wouldn’t you also do whatever it takes [legally XD] to get it too? That’s the fun in collecting!

14 comments

Congrats!! Your wait is over :D Like they say one’s man poison is another man’s meat. At the end of the day it will on your shelve not other ppl so just enjoy your big loot haha. So will your mom allow you to build first? hehe. I remember you said you had to wait for the new display to come before you can start building.

Very good point there! And yeah, I intend to enjoy my big catch fully. XD

After bombing my subject, I’m not sure if I want to try negotiating, LOL!!! No building, it’s all wrapped up and stored away on the top of my cupboard where I can look up and see it and curse my lack of space. xD

the wait is finally over, congrats of having your PG00R in hand!! errmm now a new waiting journey has begun XD nice comparison showing the scale of things, other reviews i saw they used other PG boxes to compare but i never had or seen a PG box to know the size ^^;;;

hope you get a new cabinet sooon! .. or just fire up the GN Drives and display hem on your desk :PPP *the particles may also help with your studies* lol